Memo To: Website browsers, fans,
clientsFrom: Jude WanniskiRe: One more year for Mom, in the
bag.

Our favorite Earthwatcher, Dr. Fred
Singer <ssinger1@gmu.edu>,
herewith issues his year-end report on the planet from the Science &
Environmental Policy Project. Mother Earth has made it for one more year,
thank goodness, but the Forces of Darkness never sleep. Nor do Al Gore and Ted
Koppel.

* * * * *

We're about the close the book on 1997,
edging ever closer to the turning of the Millennium and the predicted tidal
wave of environmental apocalyptics. Those who own family-sized cars and home
furnaces, brace yourselves.

Actually, 1997 wasn't all bad. A
seemingly large number of scientific studies were withdrawn from publication,
but honesty and personal responsibility among scientists strikes us as a good
sign, not a bad one. In Norway, the government dug in its heels and won big
concessions from the International Whaling Commission. Out west, a federal
judge told Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to send his Canadian wolves
packing. Greenpeace and its various chapters of in-your-face activists
continued to lose public support. Tropical disease experts, including several
from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, slammed claims of widespread
malaria outbreaks due to global warming. Scientists at Penn State
discovered that the Old Faithful geyser and other thermal fixtures at
Yellowstone National Park emit 10 times the carbon dioxide of a typical
mid-sized coal-fired power plant. A new analysis of existing data indicated
that, in the event of a global warming, sea level will go down, not up. And
despite opposition from the Natural Resources Defense Council, House
Resolution 859 was introduced at year's end to repeal the provision limiting
Americans to (generally inadequate) low-flush toilets.
Awwwriiight!

In the news media, 1997 saw an epidemic
of schizophrenic reporting. At the Washington Post -- where the
slogan is "If you don't get it, you don't get it" -- readers went from getting
it right almost all of the time (under old science editor Boyce Rensberger and
reporter Kathy Sawyer) to getting it wrong almost all of the time (under new
science editor Rob Stein and reporter Joby Warrick). But at other
newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Boston Globe, flights of
astonishing insight and uncommon good sense began balancing out the standard
environmental nonsense. Even old Left-wing columnist Alexander Cockburn
started bashing the global warming hysterics -- most recently in the December
10 Los Angeles Times -- so we figure science came out ahead.

There were a few losses, of course, the Kyoto agreement being the most
glaring. Mainline religious groups -- particularly those often criticized for
exhibiting "finger to the wind" syndrome on a number of fronts -- hopped on
the environmental activist bandwagon. The National Council of Churches ran
public service announcements reminding us of our "moral obligation to fight
global warming." The government of Pakistan announced that it would be calling
on Muslim clergy to spread eco_awareness in the provinces. At Kyoto, an
inter-religious gathering at the Catholic Cathedral brought together
Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, Shintoists, and a Rabbi who tooted the
shofar for "good luck" during the climate talks. Somewhat in this same vein,
we should all take note that on January 14, 1998, the 26-nation Protocol on
Environmental Protection of the Antarctic will go into effect, setting aside
the entire continent as a natural reserve "devoted to peace and
science."

Professor Andrew Blaustein, an ecologist
at Oregon State University, re-emerged in December with a reworked version of
his "UV-B kills frogs" theory. Four years ago, Blaustein garnered widespread
media attention by claiming that increasing UV from a depleting ozone layer
was wiping out frogs and toads in Oregon and elsewhere. One totally befuddled
Los AngelesTimes reporter even linked the frogs' demise to the
Antarctic ozone "hole," some 14,000 miles away. But when Boyce Rensberger,
then Washington Post science editor, informed Blaustein that
increases in surface UV had not yet been measured, Blaustein, scarcely missing
a beat, regrouped and offered that the culprit then just might be a fungus
from fish hatcheries -- a fungus that had been under control until the
Environmental Protection Agency banned a long-used fungicide. With that,
Prof. Blaustein dropped off the media radar screen. To date, scientists still
haven't seen an increasing trend in surface UV, but now Blaustein is back,
capitalizing on the frog deformity scare and claiming that UV is causing
amphibian malformations. "We were stunned by our findings," said Blaustein to
the Associated Press. "This is proof that excess UVB radiation in nature can
cause death and deformity in this species." He couldn't have been too
"stunned"; he made the same claim four years ago.

Here in Washington, D.C., Environment
Writer, an obsequious little publication mailed out to reporters, furthered
its agenda in its December/January issue with gushing praise for the
Washington Post series on global warming and for the television
networks' handling of the Kyoto climate talks -- all of which we thought were
among the most glaringly bad reporting this side of Toronto (the Toronto Star
being the absolute worst).

MediaWatch, taking a different tack,
awarded ABC News' "Nightline" the Janet Cooke Award "for outrageous
distortion" for a December 9 program implying intentional fraud in the
business-funded anti-climate treaty ads that ran on U.S. television in the
weeks running up to Kyoto. (Cooke was a Washington Post reporter who
had to return a Pulitzer Prize after word leaked out that she'd "imagineered"
her winning entry.)

According to the award citation,
"Nightline" Host Ted Koppel trotted out Environmental Defense Fund activist
Michael Oppenheimer, and ran clips of "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
(not!)" Ross Gelbspan, Sierra Club activist Carl Pope, and Vice President
Albert Gore, in suggesting that those citing opposing data and opinions on the
global warming issue were deliberately lying. Koppel compared skeptical
scientists to members of the "Flat Earth Society."

The show sparked numerous complaints to
ABC "spokesperson" Sue Chang and Nightline producer Richard Harris, a rather
nice fellow who usually books more credible guests. But we note that with this
latest gaffe the track record of the Nightline host is beginning to cast some
doubt on his membership in the exclusive club of Inside-the-Beltway media
intellectuals. It was Mr. Koppel, after all, who once referred to Albert Gore,
on the air, as "one of the most scientifically literate men to sit in the
White House in this century." Well, sure, that's faint praise, but still,
Koppel should be more careful. Much more of this and he could end up reading
the news in Poughkeepsie.

At year's end, the only 1998 resolution
at The Science & Environmental Policy Project is to continue to promote
sound, scientific data as a basis for policy, despite fanatical activists,
ambitious politicians, and odds that never seem too promising. But we're
encouraged by the December 20 issue of The Economist -- one of those
seemingly schizophrenic publications -- where a colleague saw a terrific and
unfortunately unbylined article called "Environmental Scares" and passed it
along.

Here's how The Economist
characterized the seven-year life-cycle of environmental catastrophes: Year 1
a scientist discovers some potential threat. Year 2 journalists oversimplify
and exaggerate it. Year 3 environmentalists chime in and polarize the issue
("Either you agree that the world is about to come to an end and are fired by
righteous indignation, or you are a paid lackey of big business"). Year 4
brings the international conferences and bureaucrats well-supplied with
club-class tickets and limelight. Year 5 is the year nations pick one country
as villain and gang up on it. Year 6 is when skeptical scientists say the
scare is exaggerated, driving the Greens into paroxysms of pious rage ("How
dare you give space to fringe views? cry these once-fringe people to newspaper
editors.") Year 7 is the year of the quiet climbdown. Without fanfare, the
official consensus estimate of the size of the problem shrinks to
nothingness.

Highly unscientific, of course, but
whoever wrote this article, we hope he's right. Happy Year
7.